“Live from the City of Sisterly & Brotherly Love: The Founding Mothers and Fathers of Public Health & Social Justice”

The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA

3339.0: Monday, November 11, 2002 - 4:30 PM

Abstract #51449

Anne-Emanuelle Birn, ScD, Health Services Management and Policy Program, Milano Graduate School, New School for Social Research, 66 5th Ave, New York, NY 10011, 212-229-5339, aebirn@newschool.edu and Elizabeth Fee, PhD, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Chief, History of Medicine Division, Building 38, 1E 21, 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894.

Since Philadelphia is known as the home of the “founding fathers” of the United States, the Spirit of 1848’s history committee thought it would be timely and appropriate to reflect on the founders (mothers and fathers, of course) of public health from the U.S. and around the world. The session is organized as a mini-extravaganza of “in-character” presentations, music, and visuals based upon figures from the distant and recent past whose work revolves around questions of social justice and public health.

Tentative list of figures:

--Betances (Puerto Rican doctor/independence fighter) --Walter Lear (gay rights, health rights) --Helen Rodríguez Trias (women's health and reproductive rights) --Alice Hamilton (occupational safety and health) --Bernardino Ramazzini (occupational safety and health) --Emma Goldman (human rights; reproductive rights) --Friedrich Engels (social analyst and revolutionary) --W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington: a debate (civil, social, educational rights) --Harriet Tubman (underground railroad; abolition of slavery) --Lillian Wald (public health nursing) --Norman Bethune (public health internationalist) --Mahatma Gandhi (liberation of colonized peoples; non-violence) -- Manuel Nuñez Butrón (Peruvian public health advocate)

Learning Objectives:

At the conclusion of this session, participants should be able to

identify a series of well-known and lesser known public health founders; understand the historical role and possibilities of public health work; draw useful lessons --both positive and negative-- from our predecessors; participate in constructing a collective identity around public health’s social struggles; and employ insights and successes from the past to inform future public health movements.

Keywords: History, Public Health

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.

History session: "Live from the City of Sisterly & Brotherly Love: The Founding Mothers and Fathers of Public Health & Social Justice"

The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA